New York Excelsior Press Conference [Day 2 OWL]

After New York Excelsior won against Boston Uprising they gave a 10 minute press conference. The players that attended were: Janus, ArK, JjoNak, MekO and Mano. Additionally New York’s Director of Player Personnel Scott “BEARHANDS” Tester was present.

Jjonak, how did you alter your playstyle, as Zenyatta, to fit quite seemlessly into the Overwatch League?JjoNak: “In solo queue, I try to carry as much as possible. But in a team environment like this I just trust my teammates and try to help them as much as possible, give them heals et cetera.“

Korea is known to have a history of excellence of performance in esports in general. Do you feel any pressure from home to perform on a high level?MekO: “The supposition that Korea has the best players and teams in the world needs to go away. Now that I have played against foreign, non-Korean, teams I realized how good they are and was very surprised. They are just as good as us.“

Pine played insane on map 3 and everyone’s reaction was shock when he was swapped out again. Obviously it didn’t cause any problems, but what was the thought process behind it?
BEARHANDS: “We just had a defined plan and we wanted to stick to our plan, barring any majorly negative consequences and I don’t think we experienced those. So it wasn’t really a matter of judging anyone’s performances, we just wanted to stick to our plan.“

When a player like Pine goes off, do you try to protect him more so he can have all the resources he needs?ArK (answers in english): “Sometimes when someone plays really well, he starts to call “I’m playing really well, just carry me!” But sometimes it doesn’t happen.“

There is still a lot of talent that is not in Overwatch League right now, be it Koreans or Westeners. Is there any non-OWL player you would like to compete against in the future?MekO: “Dafran!“Mano: “Calvin.“Janus: “Modern.“ArK: “Nenne from Lunatic-Hai, akm and Dafran.“JjoNak: “Alarm.“
BEARHANDS: “I could give you a huge list, like zappis or as they said akm, Knoxxx. I think there are a lot of players not just players from Korea, but all over the world.“

Not only did you win the match today, but you won with style. There were a lot of moments that were quite exciting and heart pounding. What does this do to your moral and your drive to move forward to the next match this week?Janus: “We are not trying to win with style, we are just trying to win. It just happened that way.“Ark: “Yeah, some of our players do simply play a bit stylish, that’s probably a big reason.“

On Horizon, the one map that you lost, you ran a Moira Lucio super mobile dive composition. It worked on point A, but going into second point it seemed like a lot of struggle when they had Valkyrie (Mercies ult) and you don’t. Was this just an execution issue, did it work better in scrims, or was just that you didn’t have Valk?Janus: “If you get the first point a lot of heroes get ult charge, so we didn’t want to lose the ult-charge. So we tried to attack one more time and then if it doesn’t work out we switch after that.“

As you know OGN is getting out of Overwatch and APEX is closing, to make place for Korean contenders. APEX already has a lot of history, is there a memory or a moment that you are very fond of?Janus&Meko: “The one thing we all remember was in the season 2 quarterfinal against Runaway. On Eichenwald, as soon as Kaiser hit his earth shatter we were like ‘OH, F***’“